Forming an Advocacy Habit: Be an Active, Engaged, Involved Citizen!

Well folks, I bet you didn’t believe you’d make it, but it’s the end of September and the end, for now, of my daily advocacy habit tips. I’m considering extending the program in a more concerted way (I admit it, you all were guinnea pigs), so let me know what you liked (or didn’t) about the daily missives.

I would not blame you at all if recent U.S. and world events overtook your enthusiasm for developing an advocacy habit. That said, I believe in a world of decreasing federal and state budgets combined with increasing distrust of Congress and lobbyists, advocacy, and especially grassroots advocacy, will be more important than ever.

So, your very last advocacy task is to come up with a few things on your own that you know you can commit to on a daily basis to be a better advocate. They might include:

• Daily review of the webpages of your elected officials to see what they’re up to
• Connect, at least once per day, with another advocate or an elected official through a social networking site like Facebook or Linked In
• Check the headlines of the Washington Post and/or the Politics page on the Post website to see the latest that’s going on in Washington, DC (you can do the same for state level publications)
• Watch the U.S. House and Senate in session every once in a while on C-Span.org

You can start your daily ritual by checking for any statements on the websites of your relevant elected official noting how they voted on the “bailout” or “financial rescue” bill (depending on your perspective. You can find them at www.house.gov or www.senate.gov. If you think they did the right thing (or the wrong), let them know!

Happy Advocating!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Know your Legislators!

Whether you're an individual advocate or leading a campaign, it is always a good idea to know a little about the audience receiving your advocacy messages. Elected officials and their staff will respond far more positively to a message that is framed in terms that make sense to them. This means that the message needs to be:

• Relevant, in terms of a connection to the legislator's district as well as the policy issues in which the legislator is interested
• Personalized, with a compelling story about why the issue is important to the person writing
• Specific, i.e., including a very specific action the legislator can take and, of course
• Trustworthy. This is not the place to guess about impacts or make us numbers (yes, I know it feels like legislators make up numbers all the time, but you shouldn't)

To help develop these particularly powerful messages, it's useful to know something about the specific legislators to whom you'll be writing. Take 10 minutes today to do a little research on your relevant legislators and fill out our Legislator Profile Form. That way, when you have to contact them in a panic about, oh, I don't know, a financial bailout bill, you'll have all the information you need at your fingertips!

Happy advocating!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Spread the News -- Everyone CAN Vote!

I heard a disturbing story on NPR this morning. Apparently, a rumor started circulating on the Internet that people whose homes were foreclosed on would not be able to vote! Election officials and other state staff in Maryland have received enough phone calls about this that they actually feel the need to issue a statement saying "you can still vote, even if you've had your house foreclosed on."

This mortgage crisis is coming to something serious when people think their right to vote is somehow tied up in their property ownership status. That might have been a criteria two hundred years ago, but it's not now. If you're a citizen, you get to vote. Sure, in DC we may not be able to vote for people who are able to vote themselves in Congress, but that's a different story.

To familiarize yourself (and others) with the registration and voting process, have some fun today by checking out http://www.rockthevote.com/. It will be far more fun than watching the stock market. Your task for today is to pick one or two activities you'll undertake in the next month to get people out there voting. You might add a "Are you registered to vote?" note on your e-mail signature. Or, you might post the Rock the Vote widget on your website (you can see ours at http://www.advocacyassociates.com/.) Either way, you're making the world a better, more democratic place!

Happy advocating!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Plan for Persistence

I sometimes hear advocates say "But I've tried EVERYTHING with Congressman, Councilperson, Senator X and I can't get anywhere. They obviously won't listen to me. This advocacy stuff doesn't work very well."

I recognize that it is frustrating to deal with recalcitrant elected officials who don't see the world as you do. But that doesn't mean there isn't hope! When I delve a little deeper into this complaint, I often find that the "everything" that was done was two letters, a phone call and a meeting. That's certainly a great deal, don't get me wrong, but it's nowhere near everything you can or need to do to capture an elected official's interest, especially when he or she might be inclined to disagree with you.

As such, today's habit forming activity is to think NOW about the 10 things you might do to "step up" your advocacy efforts in these situations. Write them down so the next time you feel like you've done everything, you're sure you know what that entails. I'll give you three to get started:

To be as persistent as possible I have:

1. Asked the elected official to submit a statement to the Congressional Record (for the U.S. Congress) or write an article for our newsletter (for Congress and others)
2. Asked the elected official to visit a facility / site / beneficiary of our services in his or her district
3. Learned something about the elected official's own priorities and tried to connect with him or her on those terms (i.e., offered to help with a legislative initiative or asked a friend / supporter of the elected official to reach out).

Come up with seven more and you're done with your habit for today!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Factions, Financiers and the Federalist Papers

One of our recent advocacy habit forming activities was to go back and look at the U.S. Constitution. Today, I'd like you to consider looking at some other important founding documents, specifically the Federalist Papers.

If you aren't sure what those are, have no fear! These were articles written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay and were published in New York newspapers in an effort to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the constitution. Think of the Federalist Papers as one of the earliest "public relations" campaign of our nation! I am 100% positive that if all this were happening today, these pieces would have been written as "The Federalist Blog."

Now, I'm not suggesting that the style of these papers should be adopted for modern PR efforts. Frankly, I think the language might be a bit dated for most Americans. That said, there is much that can be learned from these articles, both in terms of the structure of our government, but as well as how to pitch a complicated idea.

Since I promised a "10 minute" activity, I'm going to point you toward one specific paper, Madison's #10. For some reason it speaks to me in these trying times. Something about all the talk of "factions" which Madison describes as:

"a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

It sounds like a certain group of Wall Street financiers, doesn't it? It's OK, though, because Madison has the solution!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Link In to Advocacy

Link In to Advocacy!

The popular networking site Linked In isn't just about making business connections and finding old friends. It's also a powerful tool for advocacy. Next time you need to bend the ear of a particular elected official, search for his or her name on the site. Even if the official hasn't joined, it's likely that you'll find staff, campaign supporters and others.

The "degree of contact" icon on the list that is generated from a search will tell you the number of connections between you and the person in question. So, for example, if someone is marked as a 2nd degree of contact, that means you know someone in your network who knows your target person.

Linked In can also help you determine who in your network might be "grasstops" type individuals. They may not have told you that they have connections in high places, but that information could be found on their Linked In profile.

In essence, the Linked In approach takes the old political truism of "it's not what you know, it's who you know" to a whole new level -- and now you can capture that power for your own advocacy effort. Oh, and while you're on the site, look me up!

Forming an Advocacy Habit: Tell a Personal Story!

Personal stories capture the attention of elected officials, particularly when they are told by constituents or someone working on behalf of constituents. Take a moment to figure out why you advocate for the causes you care about. Why do they impact you personally? Use the "Story Telling Worksheet" I've developed to help.

If you're working on behalf of a larger organization, encourage members to develop their stories and do what you can to capture that information in a database sorted by legislative district. Feel free to adapt the worksheet I'm providing here if it's helpful.

Armed with this information in your own lobbying efforts, you'll be much better equipped to make a connection with elected officials.